5 Reasons Eggs Are Awesome

March 29, 2016by

Today I was reading this recent article by Forbes which cites three major recent studies – one conducted on thousands of people over the course of up to 22 years – which, together, pretty much debunk the idea that eating eggs is bad for you. The idea that eggs can be harmful is a side-effect of the failed lipid hypothesis which incorrectly (but for many decades, very persuasively) linked consumption of high-fat and high-cholesterol food with cardiovascular disease. We now know this isn’t the case, but people still side-eye eggs because they are, in fact, high in cholesterol. Even the American Heart Association still clings to this thoroughly debunked hypothesis by wrongly recommending that we eat no more than one egg per day – and only if we limit our dietary cholesterol from all other sources.

However, now that it’s been pretty much proven that for otherwise healthy individuals, egg consumption has nearly zero correlation with an increase of heart disease, I’m now going to list why eggs are actually awesome. I usually have at least one per day, sometimes two. (Yep, in case you’re wondering, since I started eating eggs nearly daily, my cholesterol levels have actually radically decreased.)

You know you want this.

They’re extremely versatile.

You can have them sunny-side up, in a hole, hard-boiled, poached (if you’re in the mood for the hassle), in an omelette, scrambled, in a casserole with a bunch of other crap, whatever you want, really. My current favorite way to eat eggs is in mini-quiche egg muffins – you can pretty much throw any old vegetable, any meat or dairy source of your liking and a scrambled egg in a muffin pan, bake it for 20 minutes and you basically have a week’s worth of breakfast egg muffins. Those freeze well, too.

They’re high in protein, iron and B12. If you are a vegetarian or looking to get greater quantities of these (and several other) nutrients in your diet, one large egg packs a lot of nutritional punch.

They’re a low-calorie, filling snack. One large egg only has about 70 calories, but because they’re high in saturated fat (that’s a good thing) they’re high on the satiety scale, meaning they make you pretty full. Chopping one up and tossing it on a salad with a little olive oil, salt and pepper is my favorite under-150-calories snack, but they’re good all by themselves, too.

You can make a bunch at a time.

I love eggs, so I typically hard-boil a half-dozen or so and just keep them in the fridge until I need them. They keep for 5-7 days in there. (Warning: Don’t freeze them in the shell unless you want a gross science experiment for your kids.)

They can help make you look hot(ter). Eggs are high in sulfur, and your body uses sulfur to produce collagen and keratin, two things that make your hair, skin and nails shiny, strong and healthy-looking. I mean, some people put them directly into their hair as a conditioner, I guess, but just imagine for a moment how hard that has to be to wash out. Tossing one on a salad suddenly seems a lot more painless, doesn’t it?

And don’t skip the egg yolks unless you really like egg whites only! You save just a couple dozen calories using 5 or 6 egg whites instead of just 2 actual eggs, and egg yolks are nutritionally superior to just plain egg whites in almost every way. Yum!